Portfolio

BY WAY OF THE BRUSH

Welcome to the gallery! This Portfolio is a resting place for displaying my paintings and drawings. I will change the posts on occasion in order to keep you up to date on my “flytes of fancy” along the pathways of my imagination.

GRASS

I tend to paint in a series…that is a fancy way of saying I get focused and oft times stuck on a particular place or thing. And then, no matter how I start out, I end up fixated. For example, I love the stark landscapes, in places I visit, in the books I read and the movies and other videos I watch. This explains my fascination with the Nordic mysteries on Walter Presents and Netflix, with expansive stark landscapes. I am in love with the plain, even sparse, language of the Kent Haruf novels; set in Colorado on the plains and prairies where I was born. It is this place that inspires exploration, and I find that I am anchored there for all time. So, it is no surprise that I have a tendency to paint a lot of lone trees, prairies and grass…all kinds of grass. So, here it is, some images that just seem to slip out once I have my palette fixed and my brush in hand.

Top left- Summer Grass, Top right- Grass in Wind, Middle Left-Grass on Fire, Bottom Left-Spring Grass, Bottom right- Winter Grass.

The Grass on Fire painting is the best of the series, as it clearly captures energy and intensity. Grass in all its forms is an example of the life cycle. Birth, death and rebirth…a common enough theme but so basic that almost anyone can relate to it. Grass on Fire clearly represents the death and destruction of a fire but in it you can see signs of life and rebirth…look for a slightly green early growth pushing through. I liken it to the Phoenix rising out of the flames and charred blades of grass bringing rebirth…another season!

SPRINGTIME IN THE SONORAN DESERT

After a very wet winter, this spring gave up some luscious colors. We visited Picacho Peak and I had a lot of fun creating my impression of the wildflowers insinuating themselves into the rough, rocky walls of this iconic peak. Picacho Peak is a state park here in Arizona; smack dab in the middle of the Sonoran Desert. The monolithic rock formation juts up skyward and provides a dramatic backdrop to Interstate 10 between Tucson and Phoenix, the halfway point between the two cities.

The really interesting thing here is that while the landscape that inspired them is monumentally large, the paintings are small … less than 10 inches in height and width. I was experimenting with a synthetic translucent paper called Yupo. The color sets up on it in a most exquisite way while energizing the whole painting.

OH! THE CRANES!

Here is another of my fixations or series of paintings. This one subject came out of one of our “flyte of fancy” road trips during the COVID years. We began to venture down southeast of Tucson on a quest to catch a glimpse of the Sandhill Cranes. Never knew it but we have wetlands in the middle of our Sonoran Desert landscape. The Sulphur Springs Valley sports several protected wetland refuges. We happened upon Whitewater Draw and its thousands of migrating Sandhill Cranes. They winter here October through March.

I have a “road trip” blog for you to visit: https://jomommasfancyflytes.com/sandhill-cranes/ which is chucked full of magnificent photographs of the place and the birds. Take a moment to explore!

Below see my impressions of both landscapes and birds, “by way of the brush”! The top three images are my paintings…the bottom one is a drawing of one crane. It is playful and a departure for me as I used oil pastels to capture the image. This is not a medium I generally play with but on occasion I like to experiment.

The “Return Flight Sandhill Cranes” is one of my first paintings when I picked up the brush just a year ago. I was and still am so in love with these birds and their stories, that I continue to paint them again and I visit them agarin too!